𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄

Part 23

1.

Harry doesn’t know what to say to Malfoy. I’m sorry to hear your father is alive after all? I’ll fucking kill him? Don’t listen to convicts? Tell me what you want me to do?

They scatter across the house, the confusing silence a descending chaos. Harry can see Pyrrha’s eyes searching his out, asking what’s going on. He can see Viola scowling, her brow furrowed and angry. James is confused, still damp from the beach.

Malfoy disappears, wraith-like, behind the bedroom door.

Pyrrha takes James upstairs, murmuring to him about helping put on his pajamas.

Viola, as always, locks herself in her room. Harry watches her door slam shut with a tightening chest.

What has happened? he thinks, rubbing his temples. He ought to take his memories, drag them with a wand into the pensieve Hermione and Ron gave him five years ago, to see what happened, once more.

Malfoy was dead. No one could have survived being thrown over cliffs, one hundred feet above frigid waters, patrolled by occasional Dementors and wardens and Ministry officials. No one.

“Except a rat,” Harry mutters.

No one eats supper. Harry doesn’t realize there even is anything until the acrid scent of burning food filters in from the kitchen on hot, grey clouds of smoke, the smoke detectors blaring until he whips his wand and shouts, “Silencio!”

Malfoy must have been cooking something before Lucius Malfoy showed up. Dobby runs in from the linen closet, hobbling and bowing low to Harry, muttering “Dobby will clean everything, Master Harry Potter, sir. Dobby will clean it all for you.”

“It’s fine Dobby,” Harry says tersely.

“Oh, no, Master Harry Potter sir,” Dobby shakes his head, his ears flapping with intent. “Dobby will do it.”

Harry leaves Dobby in the kitchen. As he leaves, he can hear the oven door slamming open and shut, pots banging and clanking.

And in the corner of his eye, he sees Abraxas slinking up the stairs. Harry slips in behind him, following with silent footsteps. Abraxas stops at the landing, starting to turn around as Harry grabs his upper arm and presses tight with his fingers.

Abraxas makes a noise in the back of his throat, a hitch of his breath as he winces, refusing to look Harry in the eye over the frame of his glasses.

Harry pushes Abraxas into his bedroom and shuts the door with a click. Then he lets go.

His son’s bedroom is littered with dirty t-shirts and white socks. His school trunk hangs open at the end of the bed, spilling old class notes and geegaws, sticky old sweets and extendable ears over the lid. It smells of sweat, everything- teenage and a little rank, and vague hints of Everfresh Soap and something else that Harry reckons smells more like rotten cabbage, or maybe spunk.

He doesn’t want to know.

Abraxas backs up onto his mattress, rubbing his arm where Harry had grabbed him. The skin is red, but not bruised. He grimaces, his lip curling up like Lucius Malfoy’s, except it is no where near as cold or sinister.